Facts of the case
\nThe plaintiff, Pidilite industries ltd. Registered the trademark in 1987 for its product \u2018Fevikwik\u2019 in respect of \u201cadhesive for domestic, technical and industrial purposes\u201d. The plaintiff applied and obtained registration of Fevikwik in 2008 and it registered its trademark Fevikwik through trademark registry and produced the certificate.
\nThe defendant, Poma-ex Products got its trademark registered in 2014 was in continuous use of the mark Kwikheal since July 2011
\nPlaintiff became aware of defendant\u2019s trademark being registered in 2014. Plaintiff sued the defendant for infringement of its trademark and passing off.
\nAn ad interim injunction was passed by high court to stop the defendant from selling its infringing product. Even after the grant of injunction it was found that poma-ex product was selling its goods with the similar packaging and trade dress as that of the plaintiff.<\/p>\n
Issues raised were:
\nWhether Kwikheal has infringed the registered wordmark of Pidilite industries ltd.?
\nWhether Kwikheal has infringed the registered \u2018distinctive packaging\u2019 of the plaintiff\u2019s Fevikwik?<\/p>\n
Reasoning of the court:
\nThe court held that the work \u2018kwik\u2019 used as suffix in \u2018fevikwik\u2019 and prefix in \u2018kwikheal\u2019 both the marks of the plaintiff and defendant cannot be said to be commonly used word by the public or company to trade. The defendant has received the registration on the word itself, hence its descriptive nature cannot be claimed by it. It was also held that with the word \u2018kwik\u2019 there exists an element of confusion or deception if it is used by both the plaintiff and the defendant.
\nThe plaintiff also questioned the validity of the registration of trademark of \u2018kwikheal\u2019 and also stated that the trademark is accountable for infringement of its packaging as it is not using its registered trademark but is using a label on its packaging which is similar to the packaging of \u2018fevikwik\u2019 with similar combination of colors of yellow and blue.
\nOn comparison of the products it indicated that the adoption of trademark \u2018kwikheal\u2019 by the defendant was with dishonest intention and it created confusion in the minds of the customers and to take undue advantage of the goodwill as well as the reputation of the plaintiff.
\nIt was held by the court that there exists a high degree of phonetic similarity between the mark of plaintiff \u2018fevikwik\u2019 and the mark of defendant \u2018kwikheal\u2019. The word \u2018kwik\u2019 was a ruling part of the trademark of the plaintiff.
\nIn the view of the court, the balance of convenience lies in favor of the plaintiff after comparing the mark \u2018fevikwik\u2019 with the mark of the defendant \u2018kwikheal\u2019 which is prima facie deceptive or misleading. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facts of the case The plaintiff, Pidilite industries ltd. Registered the trademark in 1987 for its product \u2018Fevikwik\u2019 in respect of \u201cadhesive for domestic, technical and industrial purposes\u201d. The plaintiff applied and obtained registration of Fevikwik in 2008 and it registered its trademark Fevikwik through trademark registry and produced the certificate. The defendant, Poma-ex Products… Continue reading Pidilite Industries Ltd. vs Poma-Ex Products<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-issues","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/100251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16698,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions\/16698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sachdevajk.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}